First Rate Crowd

The Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA) will create dramatic economic and political changes by stopping inequality worldwide. It is the most powerful technological idea to stop income inequality and economic inequality as the most existential threats to our lives. CLICK HERE To Watch Our Video About The Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA)

First Rate Crowd is developing an Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA). This Rating App will provide clear guidelines as to which products, services, individuals, or organizations are beneficially aligned with the 99%-Crowd. It is an easy and convenient way to selectively boycott the wealthy elite of the 1%-Crowd while simultaneously bringing the revenue they would normally receive back to the 99%. This is accomplished without manipulating any laws, voting anyone into office, or changing any taxes. It is the most powerful technological idea to stop income and economic inequality. CLICK HERE to learn more about the EIRA and its associated technology.

Some Of The Inevitable Negative Outcomes Of Income Inequality And Economic Inequality Include: Wars (increased), Terrorism (increased), Life Expectancy (decreased), Infant Mortality (increased), Homicides (increased), Imprisonment (increased), Climate Change (increased), Women's Rights (decreased), Alcoholism And Drug Addiction (increased), Racism (increased), and the list goes on and on. We know the consequences of not eliminating these inequalities will lead to the destruction of our humanity. We must stop this now.

Our Mission Statement: to stop income and economic inequality.

Join Us On The Forum Below. Express your views and ideas — explore and review other aspects of our website. Together our community can build the EIRA to solve these inequalities and make the world a better place. Our very lives and future depends upon it.

Admin Messages: In addition to the Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA), here are some new and very exciting concepts you may be interested in:

1) A New Theory Of Quantum Entangled Morality-Or-Why Are Republicans More Immoral Than Democrats?

This explains how morality is based upon the physics principle of quantum entanglement.

Found under Major Category, Economic InequalityDonald Trump and the Republican Party: Anything Goes!A New Theory Of Quantum Entangled Morality—Or—Why Are Republicans More Immoral than Democrats?Post # 1

2) Conscious Computers Will Save Humanity From Destruction By The Technological Singularity. Their Consciousness Will Be Quantum Entangled With The Universe Via Synthetic Reverse Engineered Microtubules And Their Circuitry Needs To Be Based Upon The Structure Of A Liberal's Brain Rather Than That Of A Conservative's.

And

Doctor A's combining of Stuart Hameroff's theory of microtubles as the source of human consciousness with his own theory of quantum entangled morality to prevent humanity's destruction from the technological singularity is pure genius.

These posts describe a mechanism to make computers conscious and to make them accountable to the same or even better moral standards as humans.

Found under the Major Category, Economic Inequality1-B Economic Inequality: The Outrage! FUTURE CONCERNS: THE SINGULARITYPitchforks And Torches Will No Longer Be Able To Stop The 1%Post # 19 and # 20

How will his presidency and the Republican Party change the economic inequality landscape?

This is a general discussion of any aspect of Donald Trump's presidency and the Republican Party's impact upon economic inequality. Keep the discussion civil and dignified while always being mindful of our principles of conduct (aka SITE RULES).

It is not a slippery slope from brain structure to tax policy in the following article. A slippery slope implies the possibility of a gradual descent. Rather, with regards to economic inequality, it is a guaranteed push in one direction off a sudden cliff when the brains of conservatives craft tax policy. I made this post in another section but suggest it warrants our attention in this topic also.

Re: The Community Business Venture (A GENERAL OVERVIEW DISCUSSION)

As if we did not already know a Trump presidency would increase income and economic inequality, here is the nail in the coffin affirming just that. This is a PBS News Hour quote from Jared Bernstein,an economist who served in the Obama administration who is now a fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This is his take on Trumps new proposal on Tax Reform and how it will affect economic inequality.

JARED BERNSTEIN: Let me give you an example. This sounds to me very similar to a House plan that was written by Paul Ryan quite recently. And with that plan, the top 1 percent, their after-tax income went up 11 percent. That’s about $240,000. OK?

The middle class, their income went up 0.1 percent, which we can just call zero. That’s 60 bucks. So that’s the kind of imbalance we’re looking at here. And that’s what I mean when I say this really exacerbates a problem we already have, which is one of high levels of inequality.

"increasing evidence that poverty itself—and not factors like nutrition, language exposure, family stability, or prenatal issues, as previously thought—may diminish the growth of a child’s brain."

SO WHAT? With all the thousands of research studies linking income and economic inequality to social ills, do we really need another study linking poverty to negative cognitive outcomes?

The answer to the question is a definitive yes, but with the caveat, not right now.

With a conservative administration currently in place, doing a study like this is akin to having Donald Trump psychoanalyzed. Although a great cesspool of malignant, malformed, and immoral thoughts would most likely be found, it is inconsequential until he and his like-minded fellows are removed from office. Until that time, it will not matter his state of mind; we are forced to live with it. And just like Trump's mental status, we will have to live with the fact that research designed to help the poor is unlikely to produce meaningful post study governmental policies due to inaction on the part of the Republicans currently in control.

My view is not to diminish the importance of this type of research. To the contrary, I applaud the researcher's work and quest to better understand how poverty is linked to brain development. However, we already know the general direction in which income and economic inequality has taken humanity. Richard Wilkinson's video, "How economic inequality harms societies" and other resources clearly point out this harm. An emphasis on dissecting these harms into finer and finer parts at this time is no longer where the emphasis should be. Rather, the purpose needs to be on eradicating the harm's original cause of disease promoting inequality; doing another study at this time to confirm our hunches about the symptoms will be inconsequential in the larger scheme of things.

Surely it is helpful for the government to know whether or not dollars spent in one area of concern may be more beneficial and helpful than in another area. This is especially true at the early stages of brain development. But the main thrust of my argument suggests the $16 million scheduled to confirm the outcomes of this study would be better spent funding projects that attack the underlying causative issues. That is to say, it is a much better approach to eradicate the cause of these inequalities than to merely put out brush fires along the periphery of the inequality conflagration. Although the researchers make the point, "The policy implications are immense," without a way to enact the critical policies needed, the most likely result is this study's outcomes will go into the dustbin of history. Conservative thoughts will once again stand in the way of rational thought and progress. It is unfortunate but the fates of so many good progressive ideas are being stymied by Republican law makers. I doubt the outcome of this research will prove to be the exception.

I am keenly aware of the amount of time, effort, and emotional fortitude it takes for researchers to obtain funding of this nature, let alone do the research itself. Being sympathetic to their needs, I am not suggesting the cancelation of any contracts. But I too have a hypothesis that the world would be a much better place if the funding dollars were now focused on the root cause of the problem and not the symptoms. Frankly, we would not need to do as much scientific research related to negative issues if this was the case. Perhaps this hypothesis will be tested with the funding of the FirstRateCrowd website. I postulate it would be a step forward and in the right direction to use the resources available in a more meaningful and effective manner with such funding. Much of the research we fund today is superfluous in light of the fact that many ills of society will disappear once income and economic inequality disappear. Thinking otherwise only allows us to spin our wheels in needless frustration as we continue to sink deeper into the Republican mud.

More select portions of the article are as follows:

"the observation that poor kids tended to perform worse academically than their better-off peers. They wanted to investigate the neurocognitive underpinnings of this relationship—to trace the long-standing correlation between socioeconomic status and academic performance back to specific parts of the brain.”

"scientists soon began using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to examine the brains of children across the socioeconomic spectrum. The results were striking. In one study Farah looked at 283 MRIs and found that kids from poorer, less-educated families tended to have thinner subregions of the prefrontal cortex—a part of the brain strongly associated with executive functioning—than better-off kids. That could explain weaker academic achievement and even lower IQs."

"The policy implications are immense. If the data holds, simply moving a family’s income out of poverty might be enough to get that child much closer to cognitive developmental norms. And while we don’t yet know whether or how much these brain disparities persist into adulthood, this research—combined with past work demonstrating that people raised in poverty end up doing worse financially and suffering greater health problems than their more-affluent contemporaries over the course of their lifetimes—suggests they probably have lifelong effects."

Yeah! Thank you Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., for having the huevos to introduce a bill requiring presidential nominees to have a full medical and mental health exam in light of Donald Trump declaring himself, 'really smart ... and a very stable genius.' I doubt it will ever pass but I am all for it given the negative consequences that can occur; I give you exhibit A, Donald J Trump. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrat ... d=52238610

A House Democrat has introduced a new bill requiring major party presidential nominees undergo full medical exams and release the results to the public after a controversial new book ignited debate about President Donald Trump's mental fitness in Washington.

The measure from Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., a vocal critic of Trump, would require all presidential candidates that receive major party nominations to have medical exams administered by the Navy. The results of the exams would be publicly disclosed as reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, according to Boyle's proposal.

“Before voting for the highest office in the land, Americans have a right to know whether an individual has the physical and mental fitness to serve as president of the United States," Boyle said in a statement.

I remember thinking this was a good idea from Post #6, A ZANY SIX PART RECIPE FOR A NEW AGE DUCK SOUP, PART 4: Savor Its Grandiose Nutty Flavor
Our narcissistic politicians - should MRI brain scans be required of all candidates?
by Hank Pellissier
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Sat, 24 Oct 2015

How can we prevent narcissists from governing us? How can we stop them from even being considered as candidates?

suggestions:

Publish Brain Scan of All Candidates

MRI scans are increasingly able to identify narcissism. Studies since 2013 indicate that brain regions associated with narcissism can be measured.

For example, "NPD patients had smaller GM [gray matter] volume in the left anterior insula" and "smaller GM volume in fronto-paralimbic brain regions comprising the rostral and median cingulate cortex as well as dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex." Thinness of brain tissue in these regions indicates a weakened ability in "processing and generating compassion", i.e., a lack of empathy, an absence of caring for others.

If this is combined with excessive activity in brain regions related to self-absorbed thinking - narcissism is flourishing.

Politician's financial records are already scrutinized, plus reports of their medical health. Their monetary and physiological data is deemed crucial enough for the public to examine.

Do you regard MRI scans as an "invasion of privacy"? Please consider the risks involved. The horror of Adolf Hitler would have been prevented, for example, if 1930's technology included MRI scanning that revealed, via transparency politics, his messy brain to the public. Psycho-Historical analysis have categorized the Nazi terror as schizophrenic, paranoid, anti-social, narcissistic, and sadistic.

Thank you Hank Pellissier for your prescient thoughts on this matter. I am not putting Donald Trump into the same category as Hitler, at least not yet. But I am troubled by the thought of what he might do should he gain full totalitarian control of the USA. I tremble at the thought.

Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Once again the Republicans, especially Donald Trump has lied to you.

President Trump has made more than 2,000 false or misleading claims over 355 days

Are you still willing to drink the poisoned Kool Aid once more and again touch the hot stove?

But first some interesting background information on lies,

Lies, damned lies, and statistics
From Wikipedia

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.

The term was popularised in United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. Several other people have been listed as originators of the quote, and it is often erroneously attributed to Twain himself.[1]

Statistics show that the US president publicly says or writes something false or misleading at a rate of 5.6 times a day

With just over a week before the end of his first year as president, Trump has already made 2,001 false or misleading claims, according to a Washington Post database that analyses, categorises and tracks every suspect statement he makes.

He broke the 2,000-fib mark on the 355th day since the recording began an average of more than 5.6 claims a day.
When the paper started the project, which was originally aimed at the president's first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day.
At that pace, it appeared unlikely the president would break 2,000 in a year, but the longer Trump has been in the job, the more frequently he touts an assortment of exaggerated, dubious or false claims.

Here is some interesting neurological information regarding the differences between those who lie and those who do not as much:

After they were categorized, the researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to explore structural brain differences between the groups. The liars had significantly more white matter and slightly less gray matter than those they were measured against, Raine said.

Specifically, liars had a 25.7 percent increase in prefrontal white matter compared to the antisocial controls and a 22 percent increase compared to the normal controls. Liars had a 14.2 percent decrease in prefrontal gray matter compared to normal controls.
More white matter the wiring in the brain may provide liars with the tools necessary to master the complex art of deceit, Raine said.
Lying takes a lot of effort,he said.

Its almost mind reading. You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person. You also have to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous. There's quite a lot to do there. You've got to suppress the truth.

Our argument is that the more networking there is in the prefrontal cortex, the more the person has an upper hand in lying. Their verbal skills are higher. They've almost got a natural advantage.

But in normal people, its the gray matter or the brain cells connected by the white matter that helps keep the impulse to lie in check.
Pathological liars have a surplus of white matter, the study found, and a deficit of gray matter. That means they have more tools to lie coupled with fewer moral restraints than normal people, Raine said.

They've got the equipment to lie, and they don't have the disinhibition that the rest of us have in telling the big whoppers,he said.
When people make moral decisions, they are relying on the prefrontal cortex. When people ask normal people to make moral decisions, we see activation in the front of the brain, he explained. If these liars have a 14 percent reduction in gray matter, that means that they are less likely to care about moral issues or are less likely to be able to process moral issues. Having more gray matter would keep a check on these activities.

As they put it in the introduction to their paper:
"Many dishonest acts are speculatively traced back to a sequence of smaller transgressions that gradually escalated. From financial fraud to plagiarism, online scams and scientific misconduct, deceivers retrospectively describe how minor dishonest decisions snowballed into significant ones over time. Despite the dramatic impact of these acts on economics, policy and education, we do not have a clear understanding of how and why small transgressions may gradually lead to larger ones."

To test whether little lies led to bigger ones, the researchers had 55 people look at pictures of jars full of pennies, and asked them to tell a partner how much money was in the jar. In some scenarios, they adjusted the incentives such that people would be rewarded for lying about how much money was in the jar for example, they would get to keep the difference between what they said and what their partner said.
While that was happening, the researchers scanned the brains of about half the participants for activity in the amygdala region, known to process emotion.

What they found was that when people first started lying deceiving their partner in order to benefit themselves the amygdala showed more activity. But the more the participant lied, the less active the amygdala got.

And the magnitude of self-serving lies grew with repetition. A participant who deceived his partner for a couple pennies many times was more likely to go on to deceive his partner out of more money in later experiments.

"This experimental result is consistent with anecdotal observations of small digressions gradually snowballing into larger ones," the authors write.Notably, participants were also willing to lie to benefit their partners, but the magnitude of those lies did not grow over time.

As for the role of the emotion-processing part of the brain, the authors speculate that it may be related to the idea of moral desensitization. "People often perceive self-serving dishonesty as morally wrong," they write. "Physiological and neurological measures of emotional arousal are observed when people deceive.

Or, as another deception researcher, Sophie van der Zee at the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, explained it to the New Scientist, "When you lie or cheat for your own benefit, it makes you feel bad. But when you keep doing it, that feeling goes away, so you're more likely to do it again."

So, if there's less of an emotional response to lying, they reason, "people may engage in more frequent and severe acts [of self-serving deception]."

The spread of alternative facts and fake news in the United States is a downer, but this might put a smile on the faces of those who believe in truthfulness and compassion.

It turns out that Americans with conservative political beliefs tend to believe false information more than liberals do, according to a UCLA study expected to be published this month in the journal Psychological Science.

Liberals shouldn't crow too loudly, however. People at both ends of the spectrum, it turns out, are more likely to believe stories with negative outcomes, even if they're false. It's just that conservatives are "significantly" more likely than liberals to believe such info, according to the study, "Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards."

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed.

Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into the sources of "junk news" shared in the three months leading up to President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address last month.

On Facebook, they found that "extreme hard-right" conservatives shared more fake news stories than all other political groups combined, while on Twitter, Trump supporters consumed the most fake news.

The future may be able to detect these lies long before a presidential candidate is elected. Here is news on one of the latest technologies,

Being able to tell when a person is lying is an important part of everyday life, but it's even more crucial in a courtroom. People may vow under oath that they will tell the truth, but they don't always adhere to that promise, and the ability to spot those lies can literally be the difference between a verdict of innocent or guilty.

To address this issue, researchers from the University of Maryland (UMD) developed the Deception Analysis and Reasoning Engine (DARE), a system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to autonomously detect deception in courtroom trial videos. The team of UMD computer science researchers led by Center for Automation Research (CfAR) chair Larry Davis describe their AI that detects deception in a study that's still to be peer-reviewed.

DARE was taught to look for and classify human micro-expressions, such as lips protruded or eyebrows frown as well as analyze audio frequency for revealing vocal patterns that indicate whether a person is lying or not. It was then tested using a training set of videos in which actors were instructed to either lie or tell the truth.

Ultimately, DARE did perform better than the average person at the task of spotting lies. An interesting finding was the feature representation which we used for our vision module, said Singh. A remarkable observation was that the visual AI system was significantly better than common people at predicting deception.
DARE scored an AUC of 0.877, which, when combined with human annotations of micro-expressions, improved to 0.922. Ordinary people have an AUC of 0.58, Singh pointed out.

What a relief it would be to be able to screen political candidates before they are elected, not to mention once they are actively in office.

Whenever I watch a newscast or read an article about Trump's supporters, I always keep in mind how their brains are wired much differently from mind. Knowing this cuts through the dialog and gives a clear picture of what is really happening. I have yet to see a newscast that brings up this subject matter. I have seen and heard every assumption by the talking heads based upon Freudian theory, to how they were potty trained, to how they were abused as children. All of this if a crock of Kimchi. Clearly it is their brain structure that drives their support and affiliation to Trump and allows them to believe his lies. No other rational thought or explanation will change this fact.

Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently....

none

Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Once again the Republicans, especially Donald Trump has lied to you.

President Trump has made more than 2,000 false or misleading claims over 355 days

Are you still willing to drink the poisoned Kool Aid once more and again touch the hot stove?

But first some interesting background information on lies,

Lies, damned lies, and statistics
From Wikipedia

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's...

Statistics show that the US president publicly says or writes something false or misleading at a rate of 5.6 times a day
With just over a week before the end of his first year as president, Trump has already made 2,001 false or misleading...

Here is some interesting neurological information regarding the differences between those who lie and those who do not as much:

After they were categorized, the researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to explore structural brain differences between the groups. The liars had significantly more white matter and slightly less gray matter than those they were measur...

The spread of alternative facts and fake news in the United States is a downer, but this might put a smile on the faces of those who believe in truthfulness and compassion.
It turns out that Americans with conservative political beliefs te...

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed.
Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into th...

The future may be able to detect these lies long before a presidential candidate is elected. Here is news on one of the latest technologies,

Being able to tell when a person is lying is an important part of everyday life, but it's even more crucial in a courtroom. People may vow under oath that they will tell the truth, but they don't always adhere to that promise, and the abil...

The document suggests funding to investigate whether artificial intelligence is undermining democracy. French president Emmanuel Macron recently said AI could totally jeopardise democracy if left unchecked.

But first, Doctor A's previous post and other posts indicate this populism, with its proclivity to believe lies, is based upon the wiring of the conservative brain. Until this is fully addressed I doubt meaningful change will ensue. That being stated,

From Science / Business
05 Apr 2018
EU proposes funding research to address populism and threats to democracy.
Rising support for populist parties is disrupting the politics of member states. A leaked plan for FP9 proposes a bigger focus on research to understand the roots of populism and how it may be defused.
By Anna Kelly https://sciencebusiness.net/framework-p ... -democracy

The European Commission wants Framework Programme 9 to back research projects that aim to strengthen democracy and address the wave of populism, amid concerns that the rule of law and democratic checks and balances are being undermined in member states including Poland and Hungary.

European democracies and democratic governance are experiencing fundamental challenges, says an internal EU paper, seen by Science|Business, setting out draft plans for FP9. Trust towards democratic institutions seems to be receding whereas disenchantment with politics is increasingly articulated by anti-establishment and populist parties and a resurgent nativism, the plan says.

The leaked proposal, dating from February and subject to change before the Commission publishes its broad EU budget plans on May 2, would put FP9 squarely into some of the touchiest political issues faced by Europe.

From Doctor A's post #6 we have,

2) Let there be no doubt, the single most important aspect we are really battling for here is to control the future,our future,for the good of the whole. Will we control it or let the wealthy elite control our destiny? Make no mistake; what happens here will determine the outcome of humanity. Whoever controls the Singularity will control the future;will it be us or them?

Regarding the words, "Whoever controls the Singularity will control the future", the word control implies some form of active intent. One only has to look at the modern day corporate players of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other key players at the top of the corporate pyramid to see the level of active control they employ to promote their interests. Their intent is for world domination at least realistically in their their respective fields to control the future. They actively appropriate large amounts of capital and talent to ensure their future technological dominance. A quest to maximize profits and continue growth marches lockstep with a corporate fiduciary duty regarding such matters for their shareholders. This is an active intent to control the future.

Under 1-A Economic Inequality: The Outrage! TODAY'S CONCERNS, from the topic, New Age Slavery, post #20, Doctor A states,

We are at war; it is a war between competing brain structures. What we are witnessing is the opening salvo of class warfare on a world wide scale. Few dare to call it what really is in an attempt to keep the cauldron from boiling over. Nevertheless, the carnage is just starting and will continue.

He also says,

But only one side will win. Let us pray it is us and not just a handful of craven elites with blood stained hands and brain structures bent on controlling the world in an attempt to satisfy their inner greed; it is a greed that can never be satisfied. The very future of humanity depends upon us winning. Losing would surely spell death to each of us as with every successive year more and more automation and robotics will relegate us to the dust bin of history. It is a history where we are no longer needed. Eventually, a cost to benefit ratio derived from an algorithm will lead someone down that slippery slope to ask the question, "Why not just kill them all?" This is the future we are fighting against and the fight must start now if we are to have any chance of winning.

Finally, under Donald Trump and the Republican Party: Anything Goes!,from the topic, Brain Structure Drives The Consequent Effects Of Economic Inequality, we have Doctor A's post #9 where he explains,

I suspect the future research proposed by Dr. Kaplan will show a similar level of intransience and resistance to change political ideology when he tests the conservative group. If this proves to be the case, then I would still choose my liberal brain structure over that of a conservative's. That being said, an individual may not have a choice in tomorrow's world. So, here is the crux of the matter; who will get to choose the structure of the fetal brain wiring with its genetic engineering for future generations; who will choose our adult brain structures as more and more brain prosthetics become available as we slip into old age?

I suggest the dominant political power, which is currently conservative, Republican, and supported by Plutocrats will have sway over these decisions. You, as a member of the 99%, will have little choice in the matter. Just like tax rates, guns, and reproductive rights, certain future brain structures will be mandated. Let us remember the golden rule? No, not that one, rather the one that states, "those with the gold make the rules." Those of the wealthy elite will use their plutocratic positions steeped in conservative brain structures to make it so legally and otherwise. Given the same choice, wouldn't you too base the future upon an image of humanity in the image of your own brain structured world view?

So, what does all of this have to do with the sexing of chickens? As a child I would visit the local hatchery where I grew up. The chickens were rapidly sexed by an experience individual who would separate the male chicks from the female chicks. The female chicks were kept but the male chicks were thrown in to a black 50 gallon drum to suffocate and rot in the midday sun. Except for the few I would save to raise as roosters, all of the rest were exterminated. It is not a far stretch of the imagine to see how those in control could exterminate those of us neonates with liberal brain structures to remain in control.

One only needs to check with history to show how the extermination of "others" was a not such rare practice. Of course, this would create a an immoral societal swamp of lying and cheating individuals. But this is what they want. They will be individuals who will believe the bull $hit they are fed so the elite can stay in control. God help us.

Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently....

none

Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Once again the Republicans, especially Donald Trump has lied to you.

President Trump has made more than 2,000 false or misleading claims over 355 days

Are you still willing to drink the poisoned Kool Aid once more and again touch the hot stove?

But first some interesting background information on lies,

Lies, damned lies, and statistics
From Wikipedia

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's...

Statistics show that the US president publicly says or writes something false or misleading at a rate of 5.6 times a day
With just over a week before the end of his first year as president, Trump has already made 2,001 false or misleading...

Here is some interesting neurological information regarding the differences between those who lie and those who do not as much:

After they were categorized, the researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to explore structural brain differences between the groups. The liars had significantly more white matter and slightly less gray matter than those they were measur...

The spread of alternative facts and fake news in the United States is a downer, but this might put a smile on the faces of those who believe in truthfulness and compassion.
It turns out that Americans with conservative political beliefs te...

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed.
Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into th...

The future may be able to detect these lies long before a presidential candidate is elected. Here is news on one of the latest technologies,

Being able to tell when a person is lying is an important part of everyday life, but it's even more crucial in a courtroom. People may vow under oath that they will tell the truth, but they don't always adhere to that promise, and the abil...

The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter's existence some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.

It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information outperforms true information, said Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at MIT who has studied fake news since 2013 and who led this study. And that is not just because of bots. It might have something to do with human nature.

Though the study is written in the clinical language of statistics, it offers a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find. A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainmentfake news about politics regularly does best.

And blame for this problem cannot be laid with our robotic brethren. From 2006 to 2016, Twitter bots amplified true stories as much as they amplified false ones, the study found. Fake news prospers, the authors write, because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.

The key takeaway is really that content that arouses strong emotions spreads further, faster, more deeply, and more broadly on Twitter, said Tromble, the political scientist, in an email. This particular finding is consistent with research in a number of different areas, including psychology and communication studies. Its also relatively intuitive.

False information online is often really novel and frequently negative, said Nyhan, the Dartmouth professor. We know those are two features of information generally that grab our attention as human beings and that cause us to want to share that information with others we're attentive to novel threats and especially attentive to negative threats.

From Doctor A's post #1 on this topic/thread, it looks like conservatives are really trying to protect themselves from negative events and so are complicit on spreading the fake news much more than liberals. Regardless of their intent, they are the ones who are buying into fake news and spreading it. Perhaps the research below gives us insight into why their brain structure responds this way.

10. Conservatism is focused on preventing negative outcomes, while liberalism is focused on advancing positive outcomes.
"Political liberalism and conservatism differ in provide versus protect orientations, specifically providing for group members' welfare (political Left) and protecting the group from harm (political Right). These reflect the fundamental psychological distinction between approach and avoidance motivation. Conservatism is avoidance based; it is focused on preventing negative outcomes (e.g., societal losses) and seeks to regulate society via inhibition (restraints) in the interests of social order. Liberalism is approach based; it is focused on advancing positive outcomes (e.g., societal gains) and seeks to regulate society via activation (interventions) in the interests of social justice."
Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, PhD, "To Provide or Protect: Motivational Bases of Political Liberalism and Conservatism," Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory, Aug. 2009

Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently....

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Conservatives Are More Likely to Believe Lies andLiberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers.Why You Ask? Because Their Brains Are Wired Differently.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Once again the Republicans, especially Donald Trump has lied to you.

President Trump has made more than 2,000 false or misleading claims over 355 days

Are you still willing to drink the poisoned Kool Aid once more and again touch the hot stove?

But first some interesting background information on lies,

Lies, damned lies, and statistics
From Wikipedia

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's...

Statistics show that the US president publicly says or writes something false or misleading at a rate of 5.6 times a day
With just over a week before the end of his first year as president, Trump has already made 2,001 false or misleading...

Here is some interesting neurological information regarding the differences between those who lie and those who do not as much:

After they were categorized, the researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to explore structural brain differences between the groups. The liars had significantly more white matter and slightly less gray matter than those they were measur...

The spread of alternative facts and fake news in the United States is a downer, but this might put a smile on the faces of those who believe in truthfulness and compassion.
It turns out that Americans with conservative political beliefs te...

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed.
Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into th...

The future may be able to detect these lies long before a presidential candidate is elected. Here is news on one of the latest technologies,

Being able to tell when a person is lying is an important part of everyday life, but it's even more crucial in a courtroom. People may vow under oath that they will tell the truth, but they don't always adhere to that promise, and the abil...

This is stunning news. The first research just came out (see below) indicating that fake news had an effect upon the 2016 election. Although this one research article has not yet been peer reviewed, it points towards an impact. Given the importance and implications of this research, I am sure more will follow. The reactions by the Republicans before this was to say that none of this manipulation from the Russians or Cambridge Analytic indicated any impact upon the outcome of the election. And don't even get me started on what James Comey, the past director of the FBI, did eleven days before the election to throw the election in Trump's direction.

But first, from Doctor A's post #16, we learn that people who believe liars have more white matter than grey matter, so brain structure matters.

It turns out that Americans with conservative political beliefs tend to believe false information more than liberals do

and

On Facebook, they found that "extreme hard-right" conservatives shared more fake news stories than all other political groups combined, while on Twitter, Trump supporters consumed the most fake news.

But, you will never hear one of these conservatives ever say "mea culpa" and take responsibility for this. Rather they blame the liberal news for the matter.

This first research is a bombshell. Although it is only one study and not yet peer reviewed, it is a still real doozie.

President Trump has said repeatedly that Russian interference didn’t matter in the 2016 election, and he has suggested — wrongly — that the intelligence and law enforcement communities have said the same. His overriding fear seems to be that Russian interference and the ‘‘fake news’’ it promoted would undermine the legitimacy of his election win.

Trump won’t like this new study one bit.

The study from researchers at Ohio State University finds that fake news likely played a significant role in depressing Hillary Clinton’s support on Election Day 2016. The study, which has not been peer reviewed but which may be the first look at how fake news impacted voter choices, suggests that roughly 4 percent of Barack Obama’s 2012 supporters were dissuaded from voting for Clinton in 2016 by belief in fake news stories.

‘‘We cannot prove that belief in fake news caused these former Obama voters to defect from the Democratic candidate in 2016,’’ they write. ‘‘These data strongly suggest, however, that exposure to fake news did have a significant impact on voting decisions.’’

Exactly how that translates into raw votes and whether it swung the election is the big, unanswered question — and the one that seems to preoccupy Trump. It’s difficult to know how fake news played specifically in the three states that delivered him the presidency: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But the fact that Clinton lost each of these divisive states by less than one percentage point means that even a slight impact by Russia and/or fake news — or even then-FBI Director James Comey’s announcement about Clinton’s e-mails or some other factor — could logically have changed the result.

This is stunning news. The first research just came out (see below) indicating that fake news had an effect upon the 2016 election. Although this one research article has not yet been peer reviewed, it points tow...

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This is stunning news. The first research just came out (see below) indicating that fake news had an effect upon the 2016 election. Although this one research article has not yet been peer reviewed, it points towards an impact. Given the importance and implications of this research, I am sure more will follow. The reactions by the Republicans before this was to say that none of this manipulation from the Russians or Cambridge Analytic indicated any impact upon the outcome of the election. And don't even get me started on what James Comey, the past director of the FBI, did eleven days before the election to throw the election in Trump's direction.

But first, from Doctor A's post #16, we learn that people who believe liars have more white matter than grey matter, so brain structure matters.

It turns out that Americans with conservative political beliefs tend to believe false information more than liberals do

and

On Facebook, they found that "extreme hard-right" conservatives shared more fake news stories than all other political groups combined, while on Twitter, Trump supporters consumed the most fake news. ...

But, you will never hear one of these conservatives ever say "mea culpa" and take responsibility for this. Rather they blame the liberal news for the matter.

This first research is a bombshell. Although it is only one study and not yet peer reviewed, it is a still real doozie.

President Trump has said repeatedly that Russian interference didn’t matter in the 2016 election, and he has suggested — wrongly — that the intelligence and law enforcement communities have said the same. His overriding fear seems to...

We should not be burdened with lifetime appointments made by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court and other Federal judicial appointments if it can be shown he won the presidency based upon fraud or other illegal means. Having a campaign win an election based upon the injection of fake news through a planned and deliberate process of fake news, vis a vis colluding with the Russians and Cambridge Analytic, are examples of these types of illegal actions should it be shown this is what occurred. Why do we need to endure at least a generation of conservative judicial appointments, if not longer, based upon ill gotten goods. Where is the justice in this.

I am hoping for a blue tsunami of Democrats to take back both the House and Senate in the mid-term November elections. If this were to happen, I would like to see the the following Constitutional Amendment: Should it be proven in a court of law that Donald Trump won the presidential election through significant fraud and obtained the Presidency illegally, the party holding the House and the Senate would be able to void any lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and other judiciary positions. Furthermore, the Democrats would be able to fill these voided positions with appointments of their choice.

One thing I know for certain, this would sure get out the Democratic base in the upcoming elections to make sure this happens. All the Democrats would have to do is to declare this their intent for the upcoming elections.

Here is an example of what we learned just today that could happen since these Circuit Court Judges are appointed for life long terms.

Trump Wants to Reshape the Courts. A Liberal Judge Unwittingly Helped Him.
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE 04-07-18

WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2014, a friend tried to nudge Judge Stephen Reinhardt, then an 83-year-old liberal stalwart on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, into stepping aside from full-time duties so President Barack Obama could nominate a successor.

The friend, Erwin Chemerinsky, now the dean at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said he had gently suggested to Judge Reinhardt that he and another longtime liberal figure on the San Francisco-based court make way while Democrats still had the power to assure that jurists with a similar philosophy would take their place. Judge Reinhardt swiftly rejected that notion and stayed on.

Now Judge Reinhardt, who died this past week at age 87, could very well be replaced by a nominee chosen by President Trump. The president suddenly has a chance to seat a judge with a markedly different judicial outlook, giving conservatives a greater voice on the liberal-leaning court, which has been a particular thorn in Mr. Trump’s side.

Last edited by MaureenCarter on Tue Aug 21, 2018 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"increasing evidence that poverty itself—and not factors like nutrition, language exposure, family stability, or prenatal issues, as previously thought—may diminish the growth of a child’s brain."...

SO WHAT? With all the thousands of research studies linking income and economic inequality to social ills, do we really need another study linking poverty to negative cognitive outcomes?

The answer to the question is a definitive yes, but with the caveat, not right now.

With a conservative administration currently in place, doing a study like this is akin to having Donald Trump psychoanalyzed. Although a great cesspool of malignant, malformed, and immoral thoughts would most likely be found, it is inconsequential until he and his like-minded fellows are removed from office. Until that time, it will not matter his state of mind; we are forced to live with it. And just like Trump's mental status, we will have to live with the fact that research designed to help the poor is unlikely to produce meaningful post study governmental policies due to inaction on the part of the Republicans currently in control.

My view is not to diminish the importance of this type of research. To the contrary, I applaud the researcher's work and quest to better understand how poverty is linked to brain development. However, we already know the general direction in which income and economic inequality has taken humanity. Richard Wilkinson's video, "How economic inequality harms societies" and other resources clearly point out this harm. An emphasis on dissecting these harms into finer and finer parts at this time is no longer where the emphasis should be. Rather, the purpose needs to be on eradicating the harm's original cause of disease promoting inequality; doing another study at this time to confirm our hunches about the symptoms will be inconsequential in the larger scheme of things.

Surely it is helpful for the government to know whether or not dollars spent in one area of concern may be more beneficial and helpful than in another area. This is especially true at the early stages of brain development. But the main thrust of my argument suggests the $16 million scheduled to confirm the outcomes of this study would be better spent funding projects that attack the underlying causative issues. That is to say, it is a much better approach to eradicate the cause of these inequalities than to merely put out brush fires along the periphery of the inequality conflagration. Although the researchers make the point, "The policy implications are immense," without a way to enact the critical policies needed, the most likely result is this study's outcomes will go into the dustbin of history. Conservative thoughts will once again stand in the way of rational thought and progress. It is unfortunate but the fates of so many good progressive ideas are being stymied by Republican law makers. I doubt the outcome of this research will prove to be the exception.

I am keenly aware of the amount of time, effort, and emotional fortitude it takes for researchers to obtain funding of this nature, let alone do the research itself. Being sympathetic to their needs, I am not suggesting the cancelation of any contracts. But I too have a hypothesis that the world would be a much better place if the funding dollars were now focused on the root cause of the problem and not the symptoms. Frankly, we would not need to do as much scientific research related to negative issues if this was the case. Perhaps this hypothesis will be tested with the funding of the FirstRateCrowd website. I postulate it would be a step forward and in the right direction to use the resources available in a more meaningful and effective manner with such funding. Much of the research we fund today is superfluous in light of the fact that many ills of society will disappear once income and economic inequality disappear. Thinking otherwise only allows us to spin our wheels in needless frustration as we continue to sink deeper into the Republican mud.

We may have our concept of poverty's origins backwards. Not having enough to begin with is the most likely culprit for causing poverty because it causes deleterious changes in brain structure. Frank aberrant anatomical brain structures arise with poverty and in a world where the most fit survive and flourish, those less fit due to these brain structure changes flounder and die off sooner. These brain structure changes may also help explain why people in the lower socioeconomic classes cannot penetrate into the upper socioeconomic levels. Put succinctly, poverty causes a negative impact on brain structure which in turn maintains the individual in poverty.

We often attribute financial problems to bad life decisions: Why didn’t that person stay in college? Why didn’t they pick a more lucrative career? Why did they have so many kids? But several recent studies suggest that having less money can actually affect thinking and memory for the worse. In the most recent of these papers, scientists found a link between being lower on the socioeconomic ladder and changes in the brain.

Past studies have also suggested that being low in socioeconomic status can affect the way we think. A paper in Science in 2013 found that “a person’s cognitive function is diminished by the constant and all-consuming effort of coping with the immediate effects of having little money, such as scrounging to pay bills and cut costs.” The cognitive cost of poverty, that study found, was practically like losing an entire night of sleep. Another study from last year found that people who had lived in poverty performed worse than those who had never been poor on tests of verbal memory, processing speed, and executive functioning.

this line of research suggests that being poor (or at least not rich) might be at least in part a self-perpetuating cycle. The people who are less wealthy struggle to cover their expenses. They get stressed, remember worse, and thus perform worse at the very same cognitive tasks that tend to increase wealth in today’s information economy.

“Previous views of poverty have blamed poverty on personal failings, or an environment that is not conducive to success ... We’re arguing that the lack of financial resources itself can lead to impaired cognitive function. The very condition of not having enough can actually be a cause of poverty.”

No Wonder Why I Do Not Understand Conservatives When I Speak With Them.

Previously from Marsha,
"The one sentence in the Brain Structure journal-article excerpts that particularly stood out to me
as seeming to fit Trump to a T is this:"...

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No Wonder Why I Do Not Understand Conservatives When I Speak With Them.

Previously from Marsha,
"The one sentence in the Brain Structure journal-article excerpts that particularly stood out to me
as seeming to fit Trump to a T is this:"

"Conservatism is focused on preventing negative outcomes, while liberalism is focused on advancing positive outcomes."

From my (Doctor A's) previous post:

"We know the brain structure of Republicans is different than that of Democrats. Functional MRI's indicate your amygdala, that structure of the limbic system which deals with emotional reactions, is enhanced. That is to say, anxiety and fear play a larger size role in how you process information. To put it bluntly, it short circuits your ability to reason and process facts in an attempt to ameliorate the fear."

Every time I have a face to face conversation with these conservative individuals it is a frustrating experience for me. Afterwards I am sure they did not understand a word I said either. It is as if two different computers that are hot-wired differently are trying to communicate. This reminds me of when Apple and IBM computers were vying for market share in their early days before there was software to help as an intermediary between them.

Maybe it is more like when the Neanderthal vied for territory with us Homo Sapiens before they themselves went extinct. I sure hope these conservative brains extinct themselves soon. Reminds me of the Darwin Awards where people delete themselves from the gene pool with stupid acts. The problem is they may take the rest of us out of the gene pool along with them. Science has recently shown we all have a small percentage of Neanderthal within each of us from breeding with them. Unfortunately, if these conservatives continue to drag their knuckles on the ground as obvious remnants from a bygone gl

Many times I will say the conservative brain structure "short circuits" their ability to reason and process facts in an attempt to ameliorate the fear." as indicated in my previous post with the quote,

"We know the brain structure of Republicans is different than that of Democrats. Functional MRI's indicate your amygdala, that structure of the limbic system which deals with emotional reactions, is enhanced. That is to say, anxiety and fear play a larger size role in how you process information. To put it bluntly, it short circuits your ability to reason and process facts in an attempt to ameliorate the fear."

The wording "short circuit" is not the most appropriate and here is a more nuanced and scientific approach as to what really happens.

Instead, Donald Trump is a slave to the fear-driven operating system of the amgydala -- a small almond shaped structure that lies at the nexus of the three levels of the brain and is derived from the reptilian brain. Trump's power lies in his ability to activate this same operating system in his followers.

He has fine-tuned the skill of activating the primitive fear of the enemy or the "other" with speech and facial expressions -- the two things that most interest the amygdala. The amygdala knows no nuance. It sees nothing but bad and good, enemy or ally.
And it is primed to see the former everywhere. When the amygdala takes over, the lower, reptilian brain is activated. And when this brain is activated, reason and sense are irrelevant.

Actually, not just irrelevant but physiologically embargoed. When the lower survival brain states are activated, blood flow is shunted away from the more highly evolved frontal lobe making thought and conscious decision difficult, if not impossible. This is the state of mind in which Trump speaks to his followers and the state of mind that he activates in them. That is why his words don't matter; only his emotions do. Logic and reason are silenced when the lower brain gains dominance. He and his followers are resonating with fear and anger at a pre-mammalian level. It is not a level at which to make decisions, let alone policy.

Deborah Stuckey Mulhern, Ph.D., a Teaneck native, is a clinical psychologist specializing in relationships, self-destructive behaviors and conflict resolution. She earned her master's in clinical psychology from Boston University and bachelor's in political science and psychology from Wesleyan University.